Foreign Correspondence: The economy-class behaviour that enrages me

By Amelia Lester

Updated7 July 2018 — 12:50amfirst published at 12:04am

Have you heard about the Korean Air "nut rage" incident? Back in 2014, Heather Cho became infamous for throwing documents and insults at flight crew when she was served macadamia nuts in an unopened package, rather than on a plate, in first class. Cho, who was a Korean Air vice-president and is heiress to one of that country's biggest fortunes, demanded the plane return to its gate at a New York airport so the chief flight attendant could be removed.

Illustration by Simon Letch.

Macadamia-gate is back in the headlines because the Cho family, who founded Korean Air, are being investigated for possible tax evasion and embezzlement. (Also because Heather's younger sister, a marketing executive at the airline, supposedly threw water at a meeting attendee with whom she was displeased.)

Its re-emergence reminded me of another first-class tantrum, from 2012, when an Australian couple flying from Los Angeles to Sydney demanded to leave the Qantas plane as it was about to taxi from the terminal – because the only XL pyjamas left were from business class. The horror!

For those of us more used to flying up the back of the plane in a communal melee, life takes on a Blitz-like spirit. It's at once simpler and more complicated: there are no nuts or pyjamas to be had, but does one order the beef or the chicken? Recently, United Airlines tried to remove one of the few remaining joys of pleb class with the announcement that tomato juice would no longer be offered on US domestic flights of less than four hours. The outcry was huge – tomato juice, carefully seasoned, was the closest most flyers were coming to a meal in the skies – so in the end, United had to call the whole thing off.

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Yet there are aspects of economy-class travel which can have me approaching nut-rage levels. Domestic flights, including those to Perth, should never involve a reclining chair. Your gain in comfort is negligible; the inconvenience to the passenger behind you is very real. I'd also like to put an end to the practice of aisle-seat passengers suggesting, either through inaction or mime, that window-seat passengers clamber over them to get to the bathroom. You sit next to the aisle, you accept the responsibility of standing up when required. In return, those in the window seat should adopt an apologetic air and attempt to time their toilet runs for when you are awake, or at least not snoring.

Men! You are not automatically entitled to your armrest. Perhaps some readers of this column will be familiar with the concept of the armrest duel, wherein two adjacent passengers duke it out over the course of a flight via passive-aggressive manoeuvring. This can result in two sweaty forearms in unpleasantly close proximity, but the code of the sky is clear: the armrest goes to the most persistent – or, if one exists, the passenger seated in the middle. (That guy needs all the help he can get.)

Finally, a crime of which I am guilty, which is forgetting that I am flying across the world at a high speed, for not very much money in the scheme of things, complaining about whether or not I am being served tomato juice.

The comedian Louis CK had a joke about this: that the first time he encountered Wi-Fi on a flight it stopped working and the passenger next to him lost it. "How quickly the world owes him something that he only knew existed 10 seconds ago," says CK. Yes, yes, gratitude is all well and good – but don't even think about serving me macadamia nuts.